Although the company’s internal marketing or lead database and inbound leads is the best place to start looking while building out targeted email lists for upcoming campaigns, there is a constant need to replenish these databases with new email lists and fresh leads. Inbound leads aside, whether you are looking to build target list on the basis of geography, industry, company size or any other segmentation, there are a number of different sources out there offering business contacts with email addresses. While each of them work on varied models and range from a few cents per contact to several dollars a contact, it’s important to read between the lines and understand the underlying value proposition of each source while deciding on which one will work best for you. For example a custom target list building service service such as ReadyContacts or Reachforce offers a different value proposition in terms of highly customized role-based lists built fresh as per your specific needs versus subscribing to Hoovers or OneSource which gives you a very large number of existing high level decision makers and executives in a company. Both types of sources can help you build a target list for email marketing however they are quite different in the value they provide so it’s best to really evaluate how each source works and narrow down on what would be most effective for your company and campaigns.

Here are some sources you can refer to if you are out looking to build or acquire a new b2b target email list:

These are just some of the resources you can evaluate when you need to build a fresh business to business email list. Remember to carefully evaluate what you’re getting in terms of value from each of these and select the one that is optimum. Are there any other resources you’ve tried out or any experiences you can share on this?

When it comes to sources of business contacts as leads there are a number of different options. They are among the most valuable commodities in business to business sales and marketing and when you’re out shopping for them, you’ll notice they come in different packages. 

Pay once for unlimited use – This is the kind of pricing model which needs a one time upfront investment usually in the form of a subscription fee or purchase amount which gives you a years access or an export file of a fairly high volume of business contacts you can use as and when you need to use those business contacts.

Pros

•  You pay one time and have access to those contacts whenever you have a need
• They are usually larger databases with more contacts which could be suited to those who need volume over focus
• Considering the volume of contacts and data you have access to the cost per contact is much lower and your investment is spread across a larger number of contacts

When any company is looking out for B2B lead sources and especially for a database of companies and key executive contacts, Dun & Bradstreet’s Hoovers Online company database is on everyone’s evaluation list. Having been around for several years and with a comprehensive database of over 23 million companies, its rightly amongst the most widely known online source for company and executive information for business to business marketers. Other than the sheer volume of data that Hoovers maintains, the amount of data on each company ranging from financial figures to locations is very comprehensive and an excellent source for company intelligence which can be useful while targeting them.  

As a business to business lead source, the Hoovers Online database comes with some of the high level executive contacts in each company, some with email addresses and some without. Although they have only high level executive decision makers such as the CEO, President, COO, CIO, VP Finance, Treasurer, VP Human Resources and so on, it can be a good source of leads provided your best target contact is a very high level executive. Hoovers currently offers connectivity to Salesforce CRM and works well to populate your Salesforce account with target companies and high level contacts.

While the Hoovers Online database is an asset to almost any marketing team, if you are on a budget which doesnt suit the subscription fee required to access Hoovers or the business contacts you need are more deep-rooted and more specific roles than the high level key executives it offers, then it may make more sense to use a custom role based list building service like ReadyContacts or evaluate other alternative sources. If these are not constraints, a Hoovers subscription is always a valuable asset to have.

Every book on business and best practices emphasizes why you should buy only as much as you need and when you need it. Overstocking anything in large quantities much before you are ready to use or process it is a cardinal sin in manufacturing or production practices. No one would dream of splurging budget in advance on piling up stock, most of which will not even end up being used. Then why do it with purchasing business contacts lists for sales or marketing campaigns?

I recently read a great post by Brandon Hull of SalesTeamTools.com titled “Sales Leads: Why Buy 5,000 When You Only Need 50?” which simply resonates the point we drive to our customers as well as other marketers.  Build more focussed lists of business contacts that you need and ‘pay as you go’ so that you are not paying for what you dont need or dont need at this point of time.

Here are some reasons why it makes sense to take only as much as you need:

• Spending thousands of dollars on an annual subscription to a large database like which have millions of contacts when you may use a few hundred contacts through the year would be paying for something you dont need.
• Investing a sizeable portion of your budget on a large database subscription in advance means you are blocking a part of your budget and you have incurred a cost well before you need to.
• Business contact data is perishable and has a shelf life. Purchasing a large list well before you are ready to run your campaign will be a waste with data going bad while its waiting and will need to be cleansed before its ready to use again.
• Smaller customized lists tailored for your campaign and has only those contacts you need will help you measure your ROI a lot more clearly and give you better results for your spend.
• By paying for only as many contacts as you need you can control your costs and stretch your lead generation dollars much further by controling waste
• You break away from the bad habbit of trying to pitch to every company out there whether qualified or not just because you have their contact information and start making your campaigns more focussed by acquiring contacts only within accounts that you feel are qualified.

Continuing from our last post on Linkedin Vs Jigsaw For Your B2B Business Contacts, we’ll move on to two more heavy weights as sources for B2B marketers and sales people to build their target lists of leads and locate business executives. Hoovers and Zoominfo are well established sources for locating business contact information with different approaches. Both of them have their pros and cons which is what has to be weighed out before you decide which one best suits your needs. Here is a an overview of the two contact sources:

Hoovers

• What is it?
  • Hoovers is arguably the largest proprietary company information database with detailed company profiles and information on over 25 million business organizations. The database has detailed company overviews, locations, addresses, financial figures, competitors, news releases and key executives for each of these companies making it the gigantic resource on company information it has been known for.
• How do you locate contacts?
  • Hoovers is a subscription based database and while there are a set of free access companies, to get the most out of it you will need a subscription to get started. These can range from $75 per month for the most basic to considerably more for an enterprise subscription. The search criteria is quite extensive and you can search for both companies or contacts and even generate lists based on some parameters that matches your target set of accounts and contacts. Hoovers does offer Salesforce integration to populate a companies Salesforce accounts with the company or contact information they may need straight from its own data. Alternatively, lists of companies with executives can be exported into csv sheets and used
• What are the pros of Hoovers as a business contacts source?
  • With over 25 million organizations in the database its easily one of the most comprehensive sources of company information you can have access to. Along with its network of sources, Hoovers has managed to keep this enormous database up to date and the company information is quite reliable
  • Each account or organization is profiled with rich company intelligence which is valuable for sales persons and each contact or executive comes with a title and often with other details such as a bio and email address
  • The database is ideal for building target B2B lists and the export function ensures you can put all the data you need into a csv format and upload to your own CRM or application
• What are the cons of Hoovers as a business contacts source?
  • Not all the contacts will have complete direct contact information like direct phone numbers, direct addresses and email addresses so from a campaign perspective some amount of work may be required if you wish to make contact with these executives via email or direct mail
  • Hoovers provides users with high level key executives within companies which are mostly C-level to VP level heads of the important functions of the company. It may not be suited to your sales or marketing efforts if your best target contact is someone deeper within the organization like a manager or director level decision maker

Zoominfo

• What is it?
  • Zoominfo is an intelligent search engine which is built for searching company information and profiles. With about 3.9 million companies and 42 million people that can be searched, it provides a good source for business contacts and has two products ZoomExec and ZoomPower Sell specially made for sales and marketing to generate their lead lists
• How do you locate contacts?
  • Depending on whether you need high level executives at your target accounts or a wider range of business contacts you can select between the ZoomExec and ZoomPower Sell paid subscriptions. Once you are a registered user you can search by company names, revenue ranges, industry, contact job titles, level, geography and more. Each of these contacts comes with required contact information in terms of phone numbers and email addresses. Company information and profiles are also quite extensive and will provide most sales perons with the details they would need to know
• What are the pros of Zoominfo as a business contacts source?
  • With the Power Sell version having utp 25 million contacts at 3.9 million companies Zoominfo may not be the largest database but definitely more than sufficient to meet the needs of most b2b marketers and sales persons
  • If you need only higher level key executives the option of being able to subscribe to the smaller ZoomExec helps provide a more cost effective option to subscribing for what you may not really need
  • The search functionality is great to generate exactly the kind of lists you need by selecting your parameters and its ideal for building b2b target lists that can be exported and uploaded to your CRM
  • The contacts come with an email address and a phone number making it perfect to use for phone based reach outs and email campaigns as well
• What are the cons of Zoominfo as a business contacts source?
  • It may not suit your requirements if your target contacts are more specific in role as the contacts are a mix of contacts across different organizations and not role based contact which may be better suited to those selling more niche products to specific decision makers
  • Since most of the data is from search based technology and the size of the data is vast, over time the quality of the data can deteriorate or may not be as relevant
  • If you don’t require a full years subscription or are not likely to make the best use of the volumes of contacts or data throughout the year it may not offer a cost benefit as a pay per use model might since you are paying a subscription fee

All said and done, both of these are proven sources of company data and offer great value in their own ways. Evaluate them carefully see whats best suited for your own requirements. Stay tuned for more businiess contact sources!

When you are looking for decision maker business contacts within specific target accounts there are a a few names that instantly come to mind like Hoovers, Onesource, Spoke, Jigsaw, Zoominfo, ActiveContacts and Linkedin to name some of them. While each of these are great sources for company information and locating business contacts and decision makers in companies, they are quite varied in terms of what they offer and the model on which they are based. While selecting a source for your contacts its good to know what these are and weigh them out to determine which is the best source for your specific requirements. Here’s a quick overview on Linkedin.com and Jigsaw.com, two contrasting models that revolve around business contacts and b2b leads:

Linkedin

• What is it?
  • Linkedin is an online business network built to connect business professionals much like social networking sites such as Facebook.com, Orkut.com & Bebo which are a network of friends and social relationships. Users sign up and setup a profile for free and start linking to other connections or professionals they know who also have Linkedin accounts. This will give you access to not only your connections profile information but their connections and connections’ connections as well. In short the more connections you personally know and add to your account, the larger the business network you will have access to.
• How do you locate business contacts?
  • Once you have built your network by adding connections you can search through your network of contacts by various criteria such as company name, location, industry, keywords, contact names, titles and so on. By clicking on a contact name you will have access to any information that contact has made available on his/her profile which can include a lot of detail such as previous employment history, position, job role and responsibilities, interests, education background as well as testimonials from others who have worked with them. In short there is usually a lot you can tell about the person professionally from viewing their profile which is a huge plus for sales and marketing professionals
• What are the pros of Linkedin as a business contacts source?
  • Sign up and setup is free, you can get started and build a business network of contacts over some time without any upfront investment
  • If you know about 50 people who you can add as connections it can give you access to up to 2 million contacts or more
  • Users often provide a lot of details about themselves professionally from current position, roles, responsibilities, areas of specialization and more which can be extremely valuable to sales and marketing efforts
  • Since users update their profiles and information by themselves most of the data is quite reliable and makes this model one of the stronger sources in terms of data quality
  • With over 25 million users signed up it provides a good range of contacts at both executive as well as more deep rooted levels
• What are the cons of Linkedin as a business contacts source?
  • Since is based on a networking model, the depth of contacts you will have access to is dependent on how many people you know and can connect to in your own network. If you know fewer business associates who use Linkedin, your own network will be smaller and hence the access you have to others within the Linkedin network will also be less
  • It’s a useful source for finding individual contacts or locating decision makers within few accounts but does not have an option to bulk download contacts or export so that they can be uploaded to a CRM. It’s not ideal for lists that are needed for campaigns
  • Linkedin profiles don’t provide complete contact information such as postal addresses, phone numbers and email id’s. So it may not be as well suited as a direct information source to run direct mail, telemarketing or email campaigns

Jigsaw

• What is it?
  • Jigsaw is an online directory of decision makers and business contacts targeted especially at sales and marketing professionals who need to locate specific contact information on decision makers at accounts they are looking to target. Users can sign up free and then use points to buy a business contact they need. It uses a combination of a paid and social model where the user can either buy points for cash or earn points by sharing and uploading business contacts he/she already has in exchange for business contacts he/she needs which someone else may have added.
• How do you locate business contacts?
  • Before you start out locating contacts you need points in your account which works as credit. You can either earn points by contributing data that you already have or simply buy credits for money. Contacts can be searched through company name, industry, title, location and several other criteria. Once you have located the contacts you need you can simply buy them in exchange for points from your account. Alternatively Jigsaw also sells lists of contacts from within the database which allows you to select a list based on industry or types of contacts etc and purchase an export of the data to use in campaigns
• What are the pros of Jigsaw as a business contacts source?
  • The Jigsaw database has accumulated over 9 million contacts with a large range of contacts at almost all levels of an organization from executives to those at a deeper level which makes it one of the larger databases of its kind and provides a great source for contact information
  • The point system allows users to pay for only what they need virtually like buying contacts off a shelf and not having to pay for a subscription they may not make as much use of so its a pay-as-you-go model
  • The ability to earn points by contributing data allows you to barter your existing contact data and can enable you to access the contacts without having to use cash if you already have data that you can share
  • Jigsaw provides complete contact information from names, job titles, email addresses, postal addresses and direct phone numbers which makes it ideal as a source for email, tele and direct mail  campaigns
  • The option of buying a list is useful especially when you intend to upload the data into a CRM or other application for running campaigns
• What are the cons of Jigsaw as a business contacts source?
  • Although having a database of 9 million contacts is a benefit, it can also be a drawback since there is a fairly high percentage of contacts which has expired and although there is a system in place for users to mark bad contacts, the sheer volume of data makes it difficult to maintain the quality of it so its not uncommon to find contacts that no longer exist in their roles
  • Since the data is not added by the contact themselves, updates don’t reflect in the data when people have moved from their positions or companies
  • The lists are defined on a certain criteria and while you can specify the type of contacts or accounts you need, the contacts are identified by the type and level of contacts you need and not role based contacts which are more customized as against ready lists

Whats the verdict? It depends on what suits your requirements and is best for your marketing and sales efforts. So choose wisely!

Finding very specific role based contacts at deeper levels within an organization structure can be critical to connecting with the right people for your sales. While you can start building a list of higher level contacts like CIO’s, CTO’s and some of the top VP level contacts using ready lead databases like Hoovers, Onesource and ActiveContacts, purchasing ready lists from vendors or using search engines to dig them up building a list of help desk contacts who are responsible for issues regarding email security is a lot more specific in nature and needs a completely different approach.

Research using search engines and most databases wont turn out great results for such specific contacts at this level. Calling into the target account and navigating via phone till you find the right person by role will ensure you have a much stronger list. To find these help desk contacts who look after email security:

• Call into the company and connect to the CIO’s office and ask to be connected to the IT help desk or the person in charge of the IT help desk
• Using reference contacts which you get from the Admin to the CIO or the CIO’s assistant who generally know the IT organization structure very well find your way to the IT help desk or a more general contact within the IT department
• Once you’re connected to someone at the IT help desk ask for the person within the help desk who is generally responsible for handling issues related specifically to email security. If you can’t connect to anyone at the help desk but can manage to speak to someone within IT who may know the right person to contact for any issues related to email security, possibly at the It help desk.
• Once you have the persons name and role confirmed you can check back with the CIO’s office for any specific details like an email address which you can use to get in touch with the contact

In depth contacts like this can provide you with great leverage in the sales and make a good starting point for any sales person but there are no easy short cuts to building a great b2b lead list of operational level business contacts. If you need to get to the root of this, you have to dig deep!